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back to article NYU boffins demo tiny tractor beam

While using light pressure to move something in the same direction as light is well-understood, using beams to pull objects is a bit more difficult. Now, a couple of Davids from New York University – Ruffner and Grier, respectively – have demonstrated just that. In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, and available in …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Portal 2

    This sounds like a small scale version of the tractor beam things in Portal 2.

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  2. mike 32
    Go

    Blown away...

    I don't know if it's journalists keeping a closer watch on scientific papers/press releases, more scientists doing awesome stuff, or that we (science/society) are in a rich run of form for this type of thing, but on a weekly basis there is something new, totally mind-blowingly amazeballs being reported on.

    This is one of those moments. The video of Curiosity's descent another. The analysis of Vesta. Pretty much anything Musk does.

    I missed the moon landings by 11 years, but where we're going seems even more incredible.

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  3. NumptyScrub

    Sounds like nano-engineering is go...

    With a suitable set-up, this sounds like a feasible approach to particle scale nano-engineering as an (admittedly slow) real-time process. I can see chemists getting pretty excited about this sort of manipulative ability, wrt creating compunds with specific physical arrangements (ie specific chiral options etc.).

    How long before we can set up arrays of these to custom manufacture components from bins of single elements, I wonder? :)

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  4. earl grey
    Pint

    a +1 for boffinry

    and a toast to another interesting discovery!

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  5. John 197
    Coat

    Deathstar

    now if only they can generate and merge 8 beams...

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  6. Alan Esworthy
    Paris Hilton

    Video games developers are salivating

    Just wait until this is incorporated into video display technology.

    I can see it now..."Mortal Kombat LXXVII - It will SUCK YOU RIGHT INTO THE ACTION!"

    ...Paris because she would've been perfect for my first idea about a practical application of this new tech.

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  7. Nunyabiznes

    "Don't cross the beams Ray!"

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  8. Chris Fleming
    Alien

    Ramp this up...

    big time and a possible space lift?

    1 0
  9. SwedishCodeMaffia
    Thumb Up

    Also useful

    for pulling Corellian transports into deathstars

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